The Vergecast - CES 2016 Day 2

Episode Date: January 7, 2016

On Day 2, Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn are joined by some familiar faces as Joanna Stern and Sam Sheffer return to talk about CES. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello. And welcome to a podcast in which most other people are capturing me. Are you still paroscoping? Let it go for like three minutes and then I'll stop. Oh my God. Sam Schaeffer is here. Hey, everyone. Wow.

Wow. I'd be the loudest person in history. Hi. All right. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast. It's day two, day three. Yeah, we're calling it. I don't forget.

Whatever the hell day it is. It's a day. It's the day. It's the day. It's the show floor is open. Wednesday. We are here at the Verge lounge on the show floor. There's a crowd here.

Walt is just staring at me. How's it going, buddy? Walt and I literally finished a podcast together, like minutes ago, and now he's just here to heckle me, because this one is not as good as the one who he doesn't know. But my friend Joanna Stern is here. Joanna's just using her phone. She's Snapchating.

I'm a special guest. Joanna's a special guest. Dieter Bone is here. I'm just a regular old slub. And I think you know that Sam is literally periscoping as we do this. I will say that the angle that you've got your camera at. Swangle, sir. This is why I fired you.

It's not true. It's literally not true. It's why you fired. I mean, the angle looks, it makes you look swag. Sam, I've noticed it since you've left a verge. Sam, do I need to get that? You've spent a lot of time figuring out ways to make cameras make you look cool. Like, that right there is like that cameras.

This is literally a secret Santa gift that I requested. That's not a secret Santa thing. Anyway, it is day whatever it is, T. Day 2 of CS, our second Verge cast here. The first day the show floor is open. Speak into the mic. Speak into the mic. Go closer to it?

Right there. Okay. It's better. Guys, Walt is watching us, so we should probably do this for real. Well, I mean, Walt's, he's like, he... You don't want for Walt? Who doesn't work for Walt? That's right.

Walt is all of our balls. Anyway, so Sam, let me just ask you a question. Yeah, please. Oh, God. What is your job now? My job is a creative producer at Mashable. I put together the Snapchat Discover channel. So are you Snapchating at CES?

I am Snapchating at CES. For Mashable. What have you been snapping? I did three booth tours. I did Sony. I did LG and I did Samsung. And it's basically all thin TVs. Cool 8K.

HDR. It's like, how is HDR now finally a thing in 2016? But it only came out like two years ago. Yeah. And then it started a thing. And I'm not talking about for cameras. And now it's a thing. No, I know.

That's how TV works. No, but HDR has been around forever. Oh, because the technology to make the pixels get as bright as they need to in order to qualify for being HDR. Peter told me I can't, like, look away from the mic. You can. You're, like, looking at the line at the end.

I just, I just... No, I have to sit like this. You just have to talk into it. I'm talking into it. Joanna, the two choices... Here, Joanna, the choices are not be far away from the mic playing with your phone.

Does anyone have a rear view mirror? There's a middle choice. Oh, God. Here. The quality of the show right now, we should have some, like, Morning Zoo sound effects. Yeah, that's right. I mean, Sam has a Morning Zoo camera angle. That's what that is.

What is Morning Zoo? What is Morning Zoo? What is Morning Zoo? It's just me. It's 100? Yeah. The Wacky Morning Radio shows. Yes.

I don't know how we got here. What's we? I don't even know what I'm doing here. It's CES or? I actually have had no idea what I've been doing at CES. Yeah. I still feel like I have to be... How many years has been, Joanna, for you?

Can I move this? Yes. This way. Oh, that would be the answer? That's, like, occur to me until right now. Veteran technology journalist, Joanna Starr. I don't know what I've been doing here. What are you been doing here?

Have you been looking at stuff? She's asking me for Snapchat tips. I don't know what I've been doing. Yeah. I've done things. I've seen some things. I've had some interesting conversations about some things. What have you seen?

I've seen... Today I made a VR painting. Yeah. I mean, too big of our painting. I saw you wore the HTC one and you wore the Oculus one, right? Yeah, I've done some. Which one do you like better? And you put that epic selfie.

Wow. No, it was really very tight on my head. Oh, yeah, which one? I had really bad sea goggle face. Yeah. Did you just make that up right now? No, that's good. No, like, or ski masks.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I, you know, I don't think, because you're not seeing them side by side, I don't, like, and I'm not really an expert in the kind of graphic fidelity of the images. I don't think I really noticed a difference that much in terms of experience but I did like the controllers better

on the HTC Oh, that's really interesting. Like touch pads. Yeah. And you don't have to like move your hand to another, because on Oculus there's two buttons. Yeah, but like it's like a on the HTC

it's like a D pad built into the Oh, are you using the Oculus touch controllers? Yes. But you just hold those in your hands. Yeah, no, but HTCs is like a touch pad. Oh, cool. So I liked that experience part of that better, but I had a lot more fun in the Oculus games. Yeah.

Well, the Oculus games are super cool. I don't know. Okay. So the coolest Oculus demo. Did you do the one where you're holding virtual controllers in the air and the other controllers you're holding? No. It was like that Star Wars thing we saw last year, right? They're showing this really cool toy box thing, which is not going to be released.

I don't know when it's going to be released, but it's all about using the controllers, and so you pick things up, you play like ping pong. Yeah, yeah. And then the last one, so you, you, there's, it's like a, like, Johnis had a toy box, and then you can pick things up in the toy box, like, knock box over. Yeah, yeah. And then you didn't get to the RC car. So the last thing that they let me pick up out of the toy box was the controller that I was holding. You were interacting with the objects? No, the last thing I did was, like, I was at a, I like shot the little rabbit. It was like being at a carnival. You did that part.

Yeah, yeah. But then the last one. No, that was where I. So the last one is you pick up a virtual controller that is the controller you're holding. And it's like exactly the right size and everything. It's weird. Yeah. Does it feel real? Yeah.

No, it screws with your head, but it's probably they don't have it here because I did it in Facebook and yeah, yeah. But it's, and then you drive an RC car using the controller that's in your hand. Right. But it's just super weird. Because you've been in the virtual reality for so. And you like one stairs. How long were you immersed for?

Oh, man. I was, I was immersed for. I mean, what is it? Come on. The experience for 20 minutes. So Sam, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, done here? What's the coolest thing you've seen? LG's roll-up display.

That's been, like, a dream of mine. Because, like, foldable, you can, like, Google foldable displays, and there's things from, like, 1998, but I finally got to see one in person. It is nuts. Yeah. It's really, and, like, there's, like, barely any distortion. Like, you know, when you push, like, an LCD, it has that, like, rainbow effect. It does nothing. It was really

cool. But, I mean, it was, like, connected to some, like, weird, janky computer things. There's a ribbon cable. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it was. Although, at least it wasn't under glass. Usually, those things are under glass. Yeah. And then, and then, It was like... To keep people from Sam from poking. Yeah, right. The LG representative

had latex gloves on, and he just very carefully was just like... Massaging. Yeah, it was... Yeah, but it's cool. It's also, it bends like convexly and concavely, so you can roll it both ways, which is interesting. What's it connected to? Like, some ribbon table and some, like, PC

that was covered with a piece of paper, and they were like, don't film that. Yeah. So, yeah, that, and then I was just walking around the Samsung booth. I mentioned this to you before, Nilei. They have transparent TVs, which I've never seen before, apparently have been a thing or have not been a thing. So they're trans-centered displays. Well, no, but that's what I say.

They've had transparent displays forever. Yeah. And now they're like, we made a TV out of it. I mean, what's a display is a TV? Yeah, display is a TV. Right. Isn't that the same thing? But, yeah, that was really cool. And rideables.

I've seen some really quirky, weird rideables. Someone finally made a $500 electric skateboard. The act and blink. It's like the size of a regular skateboard. It goes like 15 miles an hour. Only has a range of six miles which sucks. It's $500. Someone finally did it.

They're going to buy one? And it'll never catch fire. Probably not. Am I going to buy one? I mean, I have an electric skateboard now. I want a faster, better one, but they're really expensive. Once those faster, like the 20-mile-an-hour ones come down under $1,000, that's when I think I'll take the plunge. But for now they're too expensive.

Yeah. Have you guys watched Sam's vlogs? I'm watching Sam's logs all day. For a day? Well, they last all day. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Getting shade thrown at me. I've watched them and I'm like always amazed how like you're smoothly riding on this. That's when you're on your skateboard. That's right. That's right. No helmet. That's right. It's very, it seems very unsafe. Thanks, Mom. By the way, Joanna's my mom. It seems very unsafe. But I'm very impressed that you're talking really well and you're holding that camera and then I'm just. I learned for the best right here. Yeah, I taught Sam how to hold a camera while you wrote this electric skateboard. Talking about your life. Look, Patel's vlog school is not what is this?

What's the coolest thing that you've seen here? Is it anything? No. You're the person I brought. You're the person who hates CES. No, I was just telling Walt this. This is my ninth CES. Wow.

Yes. What's yours? I think it's nine. Nine. Ten. Ten. Seven. You're done a decade of CES.

That's right. You get a pin. I get a pin. You get a pin. I get a 3D printed earned. my ashes in when I die at the end of the show. Wow. That's Deeter Dark right there.

They have them here. Really? Yes. You get a 3D printed earn. So you're basically just like signing your death note for yourself. Yeah. Can't anyone with a 3D printer make a 3D printing earn? No, these are quality.

Oh. As opposed to non-quality, 3D printed earns. Like a darn? Yeah. Well, because you want to keep an urn for a long. That's how you pass down from generation to generate. Anyway, what were you saying? Well, I was just like, I was asking Walt in his.

experience. He told me this was his 25th. Wow. If you count Comdex is it's like 30. Like what year did it happen for him that he wasn't so excited about being here? This is my first year where I'm just, I used to have this crazy adrenaline and just like feeling

and you're just like you're excited. You're really excited to be here and I don't know if it's that I've been here for two. I don't know if it's time or if it's just that stuff is kind of boring and it just feels like what we saw last year and the year before and the year before that. Maybe it's consecutive. years in a row, like you haven't taken a break and then...

I'm sad about it. This year, Samsung has a fridge of the 21.5 inch to fall. Yes. That's right. And what was last year's size? Probably like 17. Yeah, they're like phones. Well, I thought your piece was great. I loved it, and it made me excited to be here again because it made

like, it made me excited about the industry and all that's changed and like that this show is a marker of what happens in the industry and like, that's why all of us do what we do, but then I got up for my computer and I was here again. Yeah. And then I was excited about it. It's funny because I think 2015 was generally a super boring year in tech. Right.

Right. Like a lot of incremental things. Like it was so boring that the Apple news that leaked at CS this year was not about like a new MacBook or like the iPhone going to Verizon. The Apple news that leaked was they're cutting iPhone orders. Which is like a big deal. Who cares? No, it's a huge deal, right?

It means people are satisfied with their phone. No, that means like a billion people have an iPhone. Yeah, and it means they're not getting new ones. Right. Because they don't want anything better. I think, but so Sam representing the light and hope in this conversation means everyone's connected. That's what you're saying.

But I'm like they're what they're stopping as much production on these current devices, right? Or they're saying that the new orders of the new iPhones are going to be cut down? I don't think they've started making the iPhone 7. You don't have, I think they've cut, they're cutting these. Right? Because they've sold a bazillion of them, right? The market is saturated with these. Haven't they sold more six S's and six S pluses than all previous generations?

Like, doesn't every iPhone beat the previous generation? Right. So the report was that holiday would be slightly beat the previous holiday, but they're cutting it because they don't think in the first quarter. I mean, to me that just means that people are still on five, five ass, six, and their current successes. Right? Right.

So my only point here is that news has never come out of Apple before. Right. And that's like that comes out of Apple during C.S. The thing that distracts you from what's happening here because something cooler might be happening someplace else. But it's, anyway, my point is only... I heard there was a red watch band. There's a, yeah. It's only Wednesday also.

We could have leaks. That was a leak. And Friday. But my point is, like, 2015 was a down year, and you would hope that CS would pick it up. and be like, everybody waited, but instead, what happened was like, Samsung did a bunch of silly stuff. Sony announced literally nothing, a record player. LG.

Literally. They literally announced a record player. Answer this question. Why are record players so hard? I check record players. Okay, so I, in Jersey, where I live, there's a really, really good... He took that second to make up the answer that's coming. No, no, there's like a story that's involved with this.

It's amazing. So we all just experienced what Sam was like in high school. There was a king named Charlotte Mayne, I believe. This is what happens when I want to tell a story on the Verchcast. Go ahead, go ahead. So in my hometown in Jersey, the English town flea market is an amazing flea market. There are gems there. So both of my younger brothers, I have one brother that's turning 21 and my other brother's 22.

They both have record players. And they both just like banged them out. They both, thank you, Joanna. I'm going to pretend that doesn't happen. He's 25. Yeah, that's right. We're close in age. Yes, thank you, Mom.

You're 25 or 24. There's a three-year gap. It's the second two-year gap. It's the second two-year. It got really banged out. Yeah. Anyway, so both my younger brothers have record players, and they both prefer to listen to music on record players.

It's 521 in Vegas, and it's getting a little bit. I think because of the sort of exclusivity of it, and it's like a really cool feeling, I think, to have this, like, vinyl that you put down, and it's the whole experience. And then, honestly, the music quality listening to, to a final record is unmatched. And so I live with my younger, my next younger brother, and his

record player sits in my living room and we have a stereo and, like, we prefer to listen to records. But I mean, we have a Chromecast audio now, so it's way easy to just, you know, link into the Chromecast audio. But I think it's just, it's really like the fact that these existed for like, you guys

when you were, no, you didn't use a record player? Did you use a record player? No, I bought a record player when I was like in college. To be like... So when we're record When were record players? So record players got disrupted. It was like record players. Is Walter out?

I sat on this stage today. Yeah. I mean, my dad had a record player in our house, but we didn't use it. Right, because we had new formats. We had tapes and then CDs. Yeah, we grew up with tape. I grew up with tapes. Like, tapes were the first and then CDs.

I grew up with tapes, but we had record players and we used them. Yeah. Oh, you used them. I mean, Hype check record players is the aesthetic of, you know, having this, and the artwork and just like... But there's like a booming, there's like a vinyl sales boom. Yeah, and there was the most popular thing on Amazon over the holiday season, right? It was the record players.

In Sony, record player was the number one post on the site, and the second most popular post on the site yesterday was the tech next turn table. And it's like crazy to... It's cool. The president of Sony Electronics sat on the stage with me this morning and was like... Oh, I saw that. Record players are sexy, they're hot. And I was like, I don't know what...

It's 2016. It's this appeal of like... us teens didn't have this, and now we have access to it, and it's relatively cheap. Like, if you look at Polaroid and that film, it's not relatively cheap. It is. No. I mean, if you go run into the flea market. Yeah, that's right.

We'll go to the flea market by records. But, like, very quickly run out of stuff you want. And then you get to the point where you just... All right, it's like, oh, you got to find, like, this John Fershante Violet's, like, $300 on eBay. Yeah, or, like, if you want to buy new music on. Yeah. How do you buy new music on? You go to a record store, and it's like $20.

You don't listen to new music on records. Well, so that's the thing. I think. Personally, I think the appeal is... Is Taylor Swift available on a record? I imagine somewhere, yeah. I think isn't everything printed to vinyl? No.

No? No. Again, so... Pressed, I guess is... I talked to Sony about this a lot yesterday, and they were like, Sony music had to go find old vinyl cutting machines and refurbish them, because nobody makes the stuff. So, like, the surge in interest is, like, creating this another...

So Sony is, like, now getting back into... Do they have vinyl players back in the day? Was that a Sony? Yes. Yeah, they did? Okay. I mean, like, all these audio companies, it's just funny that they're back. And I think it really goes down to like every streaming music app kind of sucks.

Oh, God, we're not doing this. We are. Not doing this. It's true. $40. $40 for what? Taylor. Yeah.

Final LP pressing. Okay. Apple music is literally garbage. No one uses Apple. Just out of nowhere. Literally no one uses Apple music. Spotify is the best. Yeah, Spotify is the best.

All of my friends use Spotify. And Venmo. I want to talk about Venmo. No. I want to talk about Venmo. What does this have to do with music? You can listen to music on Venmo? Because we've talked about Venmo on the Verge cast before.

Oh, no one uses Venmo. Everyone uses Venmo. Everyone uses Venmo. Guys, there's literally no reason to talk about Venmo TCS. None at all. Or Spotify. If you talk about Venmo TS, one more time, you have to Venmo me $5. Okay, fine.

I will right now. Why is it so easy to use? It's so easy to use. Just send money to anyone. You guys want some money on Venmo? I got a list. I got a list of stuff that happened here. Yeah, Steeder, do some news.

What do you want? What do you want? You want to talk about Netflix? Yeah. 130 more countries. 130 countries. That's a lot of countries. That was their big announcement.

So Netflix had a big press conference today. Yep. And their thing is they're the first global TV network. Yep. Which is an interesting thing to say. I don't want your dirty money. I don't want your literally Venmo's... What are you going to put as the message?

Oh my God. Just like, right, like... What else? The problem with this is I grew up in a time and a place where you didn't talk about money. Yeah. You were poor than everybody else and you felt awkward. or you're richer than everybody else and you were a dick. Right?

And so you just don't, and so the idea that there would be a social network where I could watch money be exchanged between friends is deeply creepy and weird to me. Yeah. The social part is a little odd. And it's all public. Any one of a hundred other ways to send money?

No, but it's just that it's so easy that all those people are there. Sam, I'm not talking about it anymore. They are. Why did you do this to the show? I love to talk about Benmo. Okay, so Netflix is in 130 new countries.

They have said that they won't promise to not censor stuff in different places they will see. And they call themselves a global TV network. Yeah. And they made a huge, like, Reed Hastings on stage today. He's like, you are witnessing. It was like, we had a conversation about whether or not, like, is he getting more evil? Yeah.

And then we realize that, like, primarily what this company does is, like, ship cartoons to children and that inherently keeps you from being evil. Well, no, they also, they also make, like, torture points. action TV shows, Marvel TV shows. What was the most streamed movie? What was the... Oh, God. It was a faster start.

Most streamed in the first 30 days. It's not the most streaming. Oh, okay. Okay. I saw a headline and I was like, well, that's a little scary. Okay, so fastest... Okay.

What was the news at Netflix other than streaming to the world? I just got a Venmo notification. They're doing a bunch of new shows. They had like a bunch of trailers for new shows. Yeah. Ross was like three. freaking out in the live blog because of the dude from the phone booth show, Dr. Who, sorry.

That's really interesting to me. Like, if you think about who has traditionally made at C.S, like, Netflix is here because they're a tech company, but they just, they just shut off content today. Yeah. They didn't show off any technology, right? I mean, it is tech, right? They're delivering billions of hours of streaming video instantly to billions of people in the world. Why did they go to a TV show or TV network conference?

Like, the hell is just the world's greatest networked TV network now. Right. Like, that's how I think about Netflix. I'd say YouTube is close. I don't watch a lot of YouTube other than you, Sam. Oh, thank you. It's because you're like, you're a little, you know, there's like this, there's seriously like this age demographic of like 12 to 25 that is just YouTube.

So, yeah. Have you guys, like, do you know the numbers of these Minecraft videos that are on YouTube? Yeah. There's like a node of Minecraft YouTubers that all have like 10 million subscribers each are doing billions of views on YouTube. And it's like literally three-year-old. And it's just like voiceover. Yeah, they're just playing games. It's crazy.

All right. Anyway. Chevy Bolt? What? I want to talk about what you guys want to talk about. I feel like me and Sam. You and Sam just run away with nonsense. Yeah. This is quality content. Well, I just want to know. Did you go to the press conferences?

No. She was drinking Starbucks in her hotel room. Are you just like opting out of CS this whole time? I wrote some stuff. Yeah. I wrote about my usual wacky, connected health crap that's been here that I, Anything good? What do you think of the new Fitbit? We talked about this yesterday. I saw it. I think it looks better actually in person than the picture.

This is the faintest phrase. I didn't get to use it, really. I didn't get to like... Is this a nice one that looks like a nice piece of... I put it on and I like page through the menus and that was really the extent to me using it. But I think it's a good move for them. I mean, five days of battery life with the color screen and being able to... Classic. track your workouts and also hopefully get better heart rate monitoring. If they had probably email on there too, I would say that they have everything that I do. They have texting. They don't have email. Oh, I see.

I would say if they had email, it would probably do every single thing I do on my Apple Watch. Are the car companies coming after you? Yeah, there's a lot of car things here. But are they approaching you as a Wall Street Journal reviewer to play with stuff? What are they pitching you? A lot of the interface improvements, things that are going on. innovation at the companies. It's just like super broad topics.

We want you to do a story about innovation. Last year I covered both CarPlay and Android Auto. I loved covering both of them. And if I bought a car right now, I would not buy one without probably CarPlay, even though I liked Android Auto better, but I'm not fully on an Android phone all the time. Well, I think one of the stories of the show is that Samsung and LG actually know how to make interfaces, as long as they're not doing it on a phone. Right.

As long as they're not skinning something. Where these interfaces live? The WebOS TV looks really nice. There's that, but there's also, apparently LG was involved in creating the interface for the infotainment system on the Chevy Bolt. And Chris, if you go watch a video, Chris tried it out. He actually really likes it. It's got a really obvious widget system for all the stuff you want to have showing on your car. And you can, like, it goes full screen.

It's responsive and fast. It's not slow and crappy like every other car interfaces. And you can still get. Android Auto and CarPlay and Chevy's on the bowl too. Anyway, right. Right. And then, you know, Samsung's TV, I think it's great. I think the fridge has got a decent interface.

Yeah. It's like, as long as they're not skinning Android, surprise, they know what they're doing. Well, you, Deiderot a thing about Tyson this morning, I think it was like super interesting because I went and played with a bunch of Samsung and stuff. It's like Samsung made Tyson and everyone thought it was for competing with phones and pulling away from Google. And maybe one day that will be true.

But in the meantime, they control an operating system stack that they are using to make really smart other things. I mean, that's basically your... Yeah. Right? I have nothing else to say. You said repeated what I thought of. Well, no, it's just really interesting because, like,

I don't know that I would want them to use Android for this stuff. No. There's a lot of stuff Samsung makes where I prefer that it not be Android, or I'd prefer that Google's ideas that would be some other... Like, the TV is a really good example. Like, do you want Samsung to just make an Android TV, or do you want them to try something new? And because they tried something new, they've done more integration with TV stuff than anything Google's been able to do yet. I want to go check out the TV, the Samsung TV stuff now.

It's cool. Yeah. But I bought a Samsung TV last year. Does that mean I'm not getting any of this? Why didn't you wait for HDR? I have HDR. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Do you watch anything in HDR at home? Is there anything available to you in HDR? I think some. Amazon content. Yeah. Is it like a real problem for all of you? Actually, no, I have. I think transparent has HDR.

Does it say it as ultra HD? All I know is transparent. It just means it's 4K. Yeah, I know. So, but they would need HDR as well. Right. Did it shine like? Content doesn't have to have HDR and 4K.

Right, you can be 4K. You can be without HDR. Do you watch your TVs at Max Brightness? Hell no. Right. So, HDR primarily works by making stuff way bright. lighter, right? And enhancing the color.

It sucks. It makes the darks darker. Yeah. Right? No. No. Only relative to... Making the darks darker is a different technology.

HDR is about the size of the gamut between dark, light and dark, and it primarily does it by making it lighter. Have you seen Sony's? They have, like, direct comparison. They have, like, a TV that's split with N-A-R and HDR, and then they have them on top of each other. You really do see the difference. It's literally like when you take a photo on your phone and you turn on HDR,

and you look at the two of them, like when you take a picture of this guy, it's basically just like that. Transparent did have HDR enabled. All I know is that transparent looked fucking amazing. I mean, like, it's an amazing show. But like there's, you know, you don't when, like, when you come to a show like this, you like look at the display and you really appreciate it. And then when you first get your new TV, you're like, oh, wow, this looks amazing. Then you get used to it. And then there are times like you're watching a show and you're just like, wow, this looks fucking amazing.

Yeah. You know, like you just like stop thinking about the content for a second. And I'm just like, this is my TV. Your TV? You know? I'm like, yeah, that's my TV. You know, but like. You got a sued?

Yeah. Sood. I did. I got a sued. Yeah. The remote sucks. Yeah. Yeah.

That's real bad. I'm in search for, I'm going to do a piece on this soon for like a action. And you're gonna end up recommending a stupid Logitechetech harmony and it's bad. That's the best one that I've had so far. Yep. I've had like 10 in my apartment. I've refused to upgrade from the Harmony one. I just keep replacing the battery when they explode.

Which what you have the one with the, well, they have like 730, 950. No, it's the Harmony 1. The old Harmony 1. It's like seven years old. You can't get that anymore. Yeah, but you can buy the batteries for it on Amazon because the rechargeable battery dies about once every three years. Deider and I play the same game.

I will use that battery to control my TV. You guys prefer smart TVs. Like, do you enjoy having all that? My smartphone TV. If I had a smart TV that was good, I would definitely prefer it to a setterbox. I love just you plug in an H-DMI cable into the TV. You plug in the H-D-My cable into the Xbox, and you're done, or into your laptop or into your Apple TV?

Like, the TV, I really just think it should be a... Yeah. Yeah. I use the new ones, yeah. I haven't, like, yeah. Like, Samsung's new ones are fast. Oh, yeah, that was a huge problem, was the interfaces were always super slow. Mine's not so slow.

I mean, I use it for Amazon, because now I don't have to use the Roku because it's built into that, and so now I just use Apple TV. I guess you do need some sort of hub, right? Yeah. Like, if you don't have Apple TV or Roku. And I don't like using Googlecasts, because when we're picking a show, show, we want to pick it together. Right.

So you've got to do that on the TV. Yeah, you don't want to do that on your phone. Oh, we should talk about this. There's actually a huge trend here, which is Googlecast speakers. Yes. I put it in a thing. I saw it. I transitioned.

Wait. So, so what? What does that mean? So there's a bunch of Google Cast speakers. Well, I'll just send it up. For like years, Thomas Ricker and I've come to the show and, like, looked for cool airplay things, right? Oh, yeah.

You always wrote about airplay. You were always coming here and finding airplay things, and they all suck. And the only airplay thing that's any good. now is the Apple TV itself. Yep. You can airplay video to the Apple TV. And even that's pretty flaky. It's not, it's not, like, I used to think of Airplay and I message is the two moats

around the iPhone that nobody could cross. And like, Airplay is like kind of gone, right? Yeah. But Google Cast is really good. So meaning you have speakers and you just, you connect it to your Wi-Fi and then you can just. Well, yeah, so you have Chromecast audio. I have Chromecast.

I have the new Chromecast. Now you just have these new speakers. They have it built in directly. And if you're on Spotify, the native. Yeah, it's like. It's connected devices. It's way native. And it's like really fast and really great.

And it's like cheap. So you could just instead of buying the Chromecast audio that if you already have a speaker system, you just buy these speakers. Who makes the speakers? Anyone good? They added a bunch of partners. Sonos?

Sonos is never going to make it. Sonos is not going to give up their technology. Fair. What the hell is Romchell? But actually how is, that's just the first one. How is linking multiple rooms and accounts? to... I don't know. I like plugging shit in still. If it's on the Wi-Fi network, you can set it up to set it up to

it up from the Wi-Fi network. The multi-room thing is more complicated. So I think the Google Cast Audio Puck supports multi-room audio, but the thing we're going to need to see is if all these speakers are up to date with that multi-room stuff. They ought to be, but it's possible they might not because it might be a slightly different version of the Google Cast OS. We'll have to see. Which, by the way, I think is probably ChromeOS

underneath. Underneath? Yeah. Really? So you need the Googlecast app on your phone to set up the speakers then, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You could do it on the web. B&O, Harmon Cardin, Ankio, Phillips, Pioneer, Ronfeld, LG, Denon, Sony. Yeah. How the hell did Apple not get airplay on all of those first? They did, though, right? Didn't they have some airspace? Yeah, I have a pioneer airplay receiver, and it kind of works. It just doesn't most of the time, right?

like, it kind of works. It's fun. It's like a little bit slow. Huh? That sounds like pretty much. I would agree that. Google Cast is more reliable than Apple TV's Airplay. Yeah.

Although Apple, Airplay works when you don't have an internet connection in a way that Oh, interesting. It's not as good at. Like direct streaming from the device to the thing you're streaming to with Google is terrible. Like when you try and stream a Chrome tab to Chromecast, it's bad. But when you're pulling it from the Chromecast itself. When you have internet.

It's great. Right. If you're like using, like, when you can't, when I cast something from my phone using the YouTube app, it like actually does it from the Chromecast itself. But when you're doing that with Airplay, did you know that if you airplay a YouTube video on your phone and you close, like you lock your phone at stop? It's so stupid. That's what I'm saying.

It used to be this mode. And now it's like they just didn't pay a lot of attention to it. It's not great. So I think that's really cool. And then the other big trend here, this is so silly. We talked about the retro stuff. So that's one big trend. the speakers, there's like USBC stuff.

Oh yeah, yeah. It's like, blew out. I didn't say it was stupid, so it was a big trend. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I didn't hear stupid. So this is like what I think, it was stupid. So I think about this show is like, Vlad wrote this piece about how CS is just a mall.

Oh, yeah. CES is a mall. But this is all the stuff that's going to be invested by this year. Right, like. What USBC stuff has been? There's a bunch of monitors, some of which are like, I think one or two of which are like standalone, so you don't need to plug them.

in, they just power up over the USB. So you just carry around a monitor. It's like Duet on a tablet, but it's just a USBC monitor. Doesn't that wreck the battery? Yeah, but how are you plugged in? No, but how much is charging an iPad wreck your battery? Yeah, the same table, so you plug the... No, but you go USBC to the monitor, right?

But then how you can't charge the MacBook? You need the adapter, right? Some computers have multiple USB cable, it turns out. Yeah. They're not just... MacBook accessions. Yeah. So they're, okay, I'd miss that.

Right. Okay. Lots of hard drives. There's a sweet looking, I think it was a Lacey hard drive. The Chromebook pixel is a USBC. Yeah. You love that thing. Yeah, they announced a bunch of hard drives that are USB type C.

Yep. There's a magsafe for the MacBook. Yeah, that thing looks cool. I saw that, yeah. I mean, it had to happen, right? Everyone's been talking about USBC for years. It's like it's finally happening. Right.

Well, next month are we going to see like finally all these phones have USBC too? Yeah. Yeah, well, the rumor this week is the Galaxy S7 is going to use USBC. That doesn't surprise me all. That's kind of where, like, that's what we'll kick this all up. The other thing that happened with the USBC this week is it almost, I almost tried my laptop. Saw it? Yeah.

I was using one of the knockoff USBC cables that wasn't, like, official enough, didn't have the right resistor. This air, right here, I almost destroyed it because it overheated the MacBook when I was trying to charge my phone off of it. Oh, oh, oh, oh. And so when I was charging my phone off of it, it was pulling too much power. It's USB-2 to USB-C? Yeah, USB-A. USB-A, okay. And what happened?

It got hot? It got hot, and then there was like a thermal protection thing built into the hardware, the USB that, like, shut off the USB for a while. So you could have lost your phone and laptop. Wait, you figured it out? Yeah, some guy on Twitter, some very smart guy on Twitter figured out. Steven Chown-Smith. Whoa.

I just had to wait for the thermal to come back. That's crazy. So anyway, check the, find the reviews from. the guy from the cron team. I thought you bought a MacBook. Yeah, I thought you had it too. It was a review and I was going to, I've been, like, I borrow a review unit like once every three months. I'm like, I'm going to do it. And then I like, no, I'm not.

Yeah. I'm waiting for the processors. Well, I saw Thomas, Thomas Ricker with his MacBook and he had like. He loves that thing. Yeah. So we should have around that cute. Oh, everything looks like that now. Yeah.

Oh, God, yeah. Those new Samsung laptops? What was it? The Samsung one? Delmade one. El made one. The LG made one. The LG one is like egregious.

Yeah. Here's what, here's my. I have a belief about Samsung and LG that will probably get us not invited to every LG press press. They are the same company. No, no, they're not. Samsung is like trying to do something new, and LG remains the shameless one.

Yeah. LG will just crazy, do shameless crazy shit all the time. What? Dan is just like, he's just staring me like I'm crazy. All I'm saying is LG did the gram. LG did the gram. LG did the gram before. That's true.

LG did do the gram. But I just think attitudeally, like Samsung is like the Algae outperforming first child, and LG is like the fucking drunk one. So where does that leave Sony? Huh? Sony is like the, they don't even make PCs anymore. The cool stepbrother.

No, yeah, Sony's a stepbrother from another family that shows up. He's like the uncle that you think is cool, but then you grow up and you realize he was just drunk. Everyone is drunk. I'm Sony. That's why I like Sony so much. Nealai, what's like, looking around the audience. Yeah, I was thinking about getting a.

Nilai, what's the coolest thing you've seen so far? What's the coolest thing you've seen so far? It's the coolest thing I've seen. I mean, it's literally only day one of the show floor. I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Are you just a show over it? I need to get back to New York. I need to get back to my dog and my wife.

I haven't seen that much. I will say I am kind of like really into drones. I think this is a thing that happens to you. Check out the, you're approaching dad levels right now. I hear the dad of you. I just think it's like a really fascinating. Did you buy a house upstate? No, but when I do, I will fly

over it with a drone whenever I wish. Yes. I bought one for my father-in-off for Christmas, and I have a flowed drones. And how long, like, how, if you buy a $2,000 drone, you're dead. You're not actually, like, using it to watch yourself mountain bike or, like,

check your crops or whatever. Like, you're going to go out. My father-in-law literally is using it. Yeah, that's cool. But, like, if you're just buying it as a toy, I can't. Right. What?

What? You're going to get bored with that? I don't think the drones are interesting for that. Well, I think it's, they're like fat. The one I bought my father-in-law is Phantom 3. It goes like 30 miles an hour. Oh, yeah. It's like super fun. Right.

But what's interesting. And also, like, how it works is just like insane. Right. Like when you're setting that thing up and it like just knows where your phone is and like, the whole thing is kind of insane. So what I think is really interesting about that. And this kind of goes to like Sam and Rydables is like it's doing most of the work for you can just be like go here or do that and so I looked around I was at the Intel booth for a minute today

did you see it um the segue that like follows you around the robot oh and then they have they have the drone that now has a real sense camera that can like look around it wait fly around Intel's real sense is Intel is huge no it's in it's in a production drone that's coming out uh this year who makes that it's Y unique sorry unique the typhoon the typhoon it's here oh yes and it has a real sense camera and you can like go and like wave your hand at it and see you know it's the infrared version of your hand. And they got it going around a drone cage following a dude. Yeah.

Intel is so deep into drones I just bought a drone company. And they've put... Oh. Oh, that's right. And they've invested heavily in a unique. Unique is the electric skateboard. I have the ego. That's when I bought.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. What's interesting to me, like, what gets me of that stuff is like, you see the themes here where all these computers are helping you do stuff in ways that feel like you're still doing stuff. So you fly a drone and it's like, oh, I'm flying this drone. Like, I'm doing all this work.

You're doing a minimal operation, though. And, like, really, you're just going, like, up. Right. And, like, the computer is doing all of the work. Well, that Lilly drone is supposed to come out this year. That was the Kickstarter project. You just throw it. That just throw it, and you fall into everywhere.

Right. And, like, right. And so now they can see you, they can follow you. They can track you. Yeah, it's all that thing. So, I look. Again, like, I don't have a use for them. So I, like, haven't really been into it other than, like, yeah, it's cool to get the video.

I guess. But I think we're in the first, like, I don't think Phantom knew that what people going to use drones for in the beginning was like video yeah like the first phantom's had no camera mats people were just strapping gopros to them and like they got to the point where they made the phantom that's michael jackson it's just a michael joflore welcome to c s they got to they got to they got to the point where they're just making that's probably not going to stop it's definitely stopped um i got it i got it i don't like you got it somebody got it i made a face the face was responded to and then it was gotten let's be quick

How is working for him going? How is the power not gone to his head? The face was just do the thing that was really to agree to. You know, Eli face. No, no, no. But if you just think about, like, the DJI didn't know that the Phantom would do anything. Then they made the Phantom 2 vision with a GoPro mount. And then the Phantom 3, they're like, okay, we'd make her on cameras.

Right. Like, they didn't know. They just, like, iterated their way towards what the thing is. I don't, and whatever, and they'll still make those forever. But if you just think about a world in which things are better at moving for you and by themselves, like, it could be a car. Like, it doesn't have to be a car first, though. Yeah.

Right? It could be this weird Intel robot thing that they have rolling around there. It could be. Sam's skateboard. It could be telepresence things in the office that actually know. Like, when I was in Intel's booth, I went up to a meeting, and there was just, like, random telepresence robots just, like, drive. driving themselves home.

Was, like, crazy. People had been in meetings, and then they, like, they disconnected from their laptops, and the robot just, like, drove itself home. Yeah. It's wild. Wow. Wow.

And it's just, like, can you, just imagining a world in which things are better at moving themselves is, like, that's actually really exciting. So that's, like, cars and drones and rideables. Well, cars and drones and rideables, and, like, you know, Amazon's got robots packing stuff up in factories. Like, think of stuff that has to move

in, like, very small. context all the way up to very big context. It could be down to like, yeah, I want a robot to get me a beer. Like, that would be cool. But, like, it doesn't have to actually involve me as a human being. It could involve just robots talking to robots, robots talking to physical things. Are they going to talk to us?

Yeah. Yeah. I like that piece today by Casey. I haven't finished the whole thing, but that's the whole big thing about talking to robots, huh? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's like, you have to get beyond apps. Like, how do you... Right. Beyond apps. Well, I mean, you can only... Like, if everybody has a

phone and the average number of apps downloaded on a phone is zero. Like you've kind of, the average number of apps downloaded on a smartphone is zero. Is that true? Is that step? Yeah, what? Casey tells it to me all the time. What? People buy, get a phone and don't download apps.

They don't download Facebook. Tons of people do this. Worldwide. Worldwide. Like, across the, all. Like, Facebook is, I assume, like, one of the first things, the billion of people, billion people on Facebook download on their phone. Yeah, but Facebook is preparing for a world in which it's not happening.

That's the whole story of the information about getting ready to, in case they don't have to have apps. And Facebook cares a lot about the performance of their app over HTML on really crappy connections because a lot of people just don't have access to it. I just don't have access to it. I just wanted to have the latest. There's 7 billion people on Earth, right? So like, even if you start adding phones to all those other 6 billion people, like they might download Facebook. Right.

Well, in a lot of the places where they don't yet have phones, Facebook is strategically trying to be on those. phones before they get them. So they're already on the phones. Right. But what I think is interesting is like maybe the kinds of technologies that actually go to those places or come to the rest of us aren't apps, right? There are extensions of phones that do things that phones can't do. And like moving is one of those things. Oh wow. Right. And like having a conversation with you in through notifications. AI. It's like Zuckerberg's goal for the year.

Right. Right. So that right. Yeah, where is building Jarvis. And like you see that stuff starting to like take route here. Like, it's, I don't, it's, we should probably write the piece that connects the drones to the self-driving cars. I mean, those are the same objects. The drones are just smaller and flop. And it also, it does connect to case's piece about the, um, so I could easily go about chatbots. There was a, do you not see? I saw that thing. Autonomous helicopter that got announced today. What? Yeah, it's a quadrocopter.

Yeah. It's big, it's so big it can have a person. Oh, it's called, it's called, it's got a perfect name for you. It's called the E-Hang. No, it's not. Yes, it is. It's called Melenocopter.

The Miletocopter. Yeah. It's great. Can I? Is there a working prototype? No. Oh, my God, you don't have natural scrolling on?

I don't even want to talk about this. Natural scrolling is for stupid people. Not going to talk about it. Wow. That's nuts. Yeah. It's a helicopter. Is this thing at CES?

I don't know. We have to find it. Wow. Yeah, let me see the picture. There you go. There's a picture. Wow. Yes.

Oh, wait. That's not the one that I think I saw. Then there's a drone with a seat. Is that that the same thing? Are you thinking of a sea plane? No. Oh. Okay.

So now the drones are going to fly people on them, which is crazy. That's awesome. Yeah, it's the best. Hype check the autonomous helicopter. I want it. I really want it bad. I mean, think about all the things that you do, either moving or like dealing with corporations that require just lots and lots of, like, lizard brain wrote steps.

Like, if you have a fraud alert on your credit card and you need to call it, like, you've got to find the number, you find the number, you dial the number, you press one, yeah. You punch in the last four digits of your account number. You find that. You punch in your social. So what cuts into all that? Like, think about all the amount of stuff in all the steps that it takes to get to you

to talk to a person that says, oh, yeah, I'm cool, you're cool, we're done. But can you take that and apply that to, like, going to work? Yeah, well, what I'm saying is, like, if you think about how much, actual intellectual effort goes into most of those steps, it's actually not that much. Nothing. It's nothing. Yeah. Like, if you could have a bot, just do those steps. Right. And so what are the other things that don't take a bunch of intellectual work to do? Driving to work, going and like, I don't know, cleaning my house, and I got a robot vacuum. Like, we're at a place now where we can just

make stuff that does those things. Right. The work now is to actually put it together into products that can actually talk to each other and aren't too creepy and eventually don't kill us all, right? Like, that's the mission for the next. Can we Can we talk about like Uber and Lyft and all of these? GM is just right but it's like are we are how how close are we to a world where I can call in self-driving Uber? Well that depends on we ask if you ask in video we're very far because like the first 95% of driving is super easy and I've heard about this the last 5% yeah but I mean

Geo hot did it by himself. Tesla's rolling out over a software update more or less I think we're close where we can do it, but regulations are going to stop us. Right. Yeah, that's, right. I mean, the number is 2020 or 20-cases. That's what everybody was said. What do they say? 2020 or 2020.

It's a question of like, what's our risk tolerance for those edge cases? Right. If we can get it from 5% of, like, things that it can't handle down to 1%. And, like, at that 1%, we know that, like, self-driving cars will kill fewer people than even driving cars? Right. Will we be able to make the mental shift to be like, that's an acceptable risk of death? And we'll be able, as a society, be like, we know who to blame?

when that example risk. Right, because these things have to be programmed to kill, right, in one way or another, right? Because if the car sees a pedestrian, you know, running into the road, do they run over that pedestrian or go and, you know, veer over or... The bridge to kill you, that whole, that whole thing. Right. It's like you deal with ethics then, too. Right.

But I don't know. I'm excited for a self-driving car future. Have you been in a Tesla that has lane assist yet? No. It is unbelievable. It is so surreal. Like, lane assist or the auto drive? It's the same thing.

Oh. Yeah. No? It's not? Lots of cars have Lane Assist. Lane assist tells you that there's somebody else. No, but there are some cars that will steer for you. Yeah, the Tesla will drive itself.

Yeah, well. I thought it will, I thought Lane Assist will like speed you up or slow you down. Whatever, whatever. It depends on the car machine. Version 7.0, the Tesla that they rolled out over the air, that whatever drives for you. It's cool. Did you do this with the Red Mouse? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was really, it's like really. just weird being in a vehicle that's moving for you. But like, to your point, Deeter, these, we think we're moving toward that point. All right. So what else are you going to look at it? CSM. You got to put yourself into Fallout 4. Excuse me? You got to put yourself into Fallout 4. Does Intel have the coolest stuff here? Fallout for the game? Yeah. You can, you go and sit in a stool and then a dude points a tablet at you for two minutes and then you wait a minute

Oh, oh, oh, wow. That's an Intel? Yeah. Where is Intel? Oh, it's like right at the beginning, right? We were there. Okay, yeah, that's the giant man. So, yeah.

Sam, what else are you gonna look at here? What else are you going to look at here? What's on your list? Um, I don't know. I kind of want to go back to South Hall. I saw like the Razors new camera. I haven't used that yet. I mean, you, like, the gadgets are back, right?

So there's, I wanna like. They're back. They're back. They were back last year, too. They went away for a lot. like a month between when Neli said they were back, but now they came back after that month when they went away.

They went away for five years. They're re-back. But they came back last year. There's so many years. And then they went away. Like, I think they went away at the end of December for like maybe two days. And then they came back for here.

Yeah. They always take a vacation. Take a little vacation so Nila can write. The gadgets do all these really, really annoying Instagrams from vacation spots. Sorry. I want to, I want to ride. Who bought, um,

segue? Who is it? What company bought? They're right over here. Yeah, I know. Who bought them? It's a... Nine bot.

Nine bot. I want to ride that little thing. Yeah. That seems cool. And then there's like all these just like electric scooters and like these little electric transport vehicles that are cool. I mean, you know, I ride an electric skateboard to work. So it's like kind of just what I think about all the time.

It's like rideables. But other than that, I fell off an electric scooter yesterday. Wait, tell me this whole story. I'm sorry. How do we not spend the entire time talking about this story? I didn't really fall off. Jeff was driving it, and I was on the back of it. And then, yeah.

Yeah. It was that the white one that's in the parking lot? No, it was the one that was at, um, Pepcom. It's called the Irby, I believe. Wow. He's putting you in the vlog. Sam is literally vlogging right now. Sam's going to teach me how to do the ride-a-ball.

Sam has become my new life coach. You should follow Sam Shephyr on YouTube. He puts up a vlog every day. No, I don't. Every day. He promises every day. What is the point of a vlog if you don't do it every day? Yeah, of course.

You need it. This is turned back into the sand. We roast Sam. That's cool. Sam right now is my life coach. That's right. Are you going to, I don't know. Don't, don't even,

are you going to start blocking? Maybe. I literally am teaching Joanna has snap. Yeah, I feel like Joanna needs, you need a mission. I feel like I need to give you like a reality show style of quest. What's your mission this year? There is nothing this year.

I tried to find it and there was nothing. You should just brought the softie stick back. I know. I have one in my book bag. I have one in my hotel. room. Where it belongs. I don't know.

I couldn't find anything that was like really got me or something that was like super wacky. It just, I couldn't find it. That new Kuregg machine is interesting. That's not wacky though. No, I know. I kind of want one of those.

Yeah. The soda machine? Yeah. The thing is a huge rip-off. Yeah. They're all a rip-offs. It's a massive rip-off. A rip-off of your money.

Also, there's like two bartending jeans to. Here's what I want the people to do. With like the old thing. And this will only start to happen later in the day because we're not, we're taping, we're not live. Just tweet at Joanna Stern. Do not tweet at me. With what you think her CES gimmicks should be. Do not.

I'm leaving. Should it be the selfie stick again? I'm leaving. Should Joanna just be the girl who's going to get a lot? She's going to get off the plane. She's going to get off the plane. She's going to get off the flashlights. I saw a lot of crazy weird stuff, you know, and I think also part of like my disillusionment is that I've been now to enough

CEF shows where you just, when you see things and you're just like, yeah, there's no way that's coming out. Yeah, like the Saturday future. And it's so sad because you're like, no, but there are these awesome sneakers that you can control with your phone. I don't know. What? The sneakers. Talk about the sneakers. The sneakers. Like I got pitched on like five different pairs of sneakers and there's one that's really cool. You can control the temperature in the sneakers. You can adjust them. You can count your steps. All of these cool things in the sneakers. And then I went to go see it. And I was like, yeah, this thing's definitely never coming out. Yeah. Because you saw like a prototype. Yeah. And it's like, oh God. But isn't that, what's, what's? But isn't that?

what CES is? It's like hopes and dreams and promises. It is, but I want to take it home. Here's what we can do. Just wait two years. Yeah. Yes, and sometimes we see that, but like, another really good example is like, I'm really obsessed with wireless charging right now. And I remember coming to the show seven years ago, I think it was Engadgett, and I wrote about Whittricity. Oh, man. And like, Wittricity doesn't feel like they're any further along, even though I know they are. I wrote a story for Engadgett called Like, This is Wireless Charging's Year. Do you know how much I regret that story? When did you write that story?

It was like seriously 2008. Was it at the Intel booth? No. No, I made, I thought wireless charging was so deep going to happen. I went and had them. It's always going to happen. It's always going to happen. And I made them make me a burger on it because I didn't believe it was.

And so let me tell you what I did yesterday. It was a formin grill, but instead of plugging in the wall, they like set it on a pad. And a pad provided enough power to the thing. Grilling with fire is probably the way. And it made you a really great grilled cheese. without wires. Yeah. Except for the wires

that were clearly connected to the gigantic metal table that I was standing over. But if I could take the foreman grill and walk away, and then that would be useless unless I had another giant metal table. But you see where it's going.

You need the... Yesterday I had two meetings with wireless charging companies and it was like, I saw this five years ago. And yes, it's awesome. I want to be able to charge my phone sitting on my couch

from a router that's in the garage. So you're saying you don't want that Apple case on there? No, I love this. Apple case, Sam. We're not talking about the App check the apple case. It's a major bust.

I want to have this Apple case on all day and Venmo all day. It's literally goo. It feels like goo. How much did Venmo pay you to? I just want to know. Is it a big number? How much of Venmo, Venmo you? You realize I can look on Venmo and see.

No ads? Tomorrow. Square space. You want to come back for ads tomorrow? You want to read the ads tomorrow? Yes. I was on Gruber's podcast too and also did about 20 minutes of Squarespace talking. That's sweet.

You just read a Squarespace ad. I just did. We should have paid now. But I mean, my main point is, like, I do love CES. I love seeing these things and I'm like, this is going to be amazing. We're going to watch it happen. I guess I'm getting very frustrated year after year not seeing some of these things happen or they just don't get better.

And it gets better, you know? It gets better. Can I just, for the people that are listening to this at home or like in your car on the way to work or something, or on your rideable. Or on your rideable. I just want to make it really. I just want to make it really clear that CES is very cool

and I think we're all a little bit jaded after being here seriously for like eight nine, 10 years in a row it's like it feels like the same thing every year but if you've never been to CES it like will seem very glorious and it is it's very tiring but like really you this is where you come to see all the cool stuff like

we are definitely like oh it's all the same every year but like you don't get to see an 8K 98 inch TV every day just like I think like the it's the little things like just walking into a thing and seeing you know, LG's booth has like 80 TVs. It's true. It's creating this massive display.

And I will say like VR is like 10 years ago, nine years ago. There's nothing. Eli, remember when I came to my first CES with you and you made me go to the Vuezix booth? Wow. And you made me put on that terrible headset. Yes. And now look at all. I mean, and I was right that day.

Oh my God. I'm just saying like remember that. But like now VR is, I mean, yes, it's not here for everybody. You have to set your expectations and understand that there are iterative updates here that happen. Right. And that's okay. So, for example, like, last year, one of reporters, Sean McCain was on a desperate, desperate hunt for true wireless earbuds. You put one on your phone.

Right, yeah. And, like, he found a couple, and they were garbage, and they weren't ever going to come out. You just knew in his heart they weren't ever come out. There's like three or four pairs here this year, and they're actually really good. So it went from, like, impossible dream to garbage prototype to retail product. in three years. Like, that's like... Two years for now, those, you're wearing those sneakers.

Yeah, wearing the sneakers, wireless charging. With a VR headset, huh? Oh, my God. You'll basically be a baby. Your shoes will tie themselves for you while you live in a virtual world and a helicopter. And a helicopter will fly. Have you guys seen these VR headsets now that maybe the Vive does this? I'm not sure because I have somehow yet to play with that thing.

I also have never tried to Morpheus. Let's go after this. Let's go try the Morphias. It's here? Morphus is here. Sony has morphis. Cool. I haven't tried to do it, but...

Have you guys seen these VR headsets with the cameras now? So it's like VR and AR combined. So you put on the headset, you're in virtual world, but you like see your hands. There was one. Yeah, like pass-through cameras. Yeah. I haven't done anything. Like Oculus doesn't do that, right?

That's what's going to be great about getting used. Gear VR does. Gear VR does do that? It doesn't do like AR. No, Gear VR is like you put the phone in, right? And it's like doing that. You can flip on the camera. You can't turn on the camera.

Yeah. It's super weird. But that's mostly like, so. you don't know. I think that's like a really weird, interesting thing. No, that's like the cross section of. You can't take off the headset. Right. So you're just like, like, click the switch and you're like, oh, my hands are here, but I'm stealing out of space. I just need to get drink. I need to get drink. Have you guys done the Samsung 4D Oculus experience thing where you sit in the chair and it's like you're going to, I really want to try that too?

All right. Well, it sounds like we have a bunch of stuff to run around and try. Joanna. We're going to find you a gimmick. tweet again at Joanna Stern. Yep. For her next season. Going home. I wish we had done this two days ago. Well, maybe next week.

Anyway. Dieter is at back on. I have to spend the week with Sam. He's helping me snap. Sam is at Sam Schaeffer. I'm at Reckless. This, I would say, has been an emotional Vergecast, a journey.

So is a good one. I mean, I love having you too here. Thank you. I think you two are tired. Yes. We're tired. We're tired and you, we got to bring you up. We got to lift your spirits.

Yeah, I'm going home. And that I think is worth. show ends. We'll be back every day from CS. See in New York. Tomorrow, I'm just going to take a whole bunch of drugs before being on the show. With David Pierce. So I'm lit up for David. David Pierce left us today. Yeah.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Subscribe to our YouTube.com slash Verge. Yeah. Follow us on Snapchat. Oh, and Nicola Fuma will be on the show. Oh, follow me on Snapchat. No. No. Cut it. Cut the mic. Please do follow me on Snapchat. Nobody watches my Snapchat. That's your gimmick. I'm writing about Snapchat and I'm using

Sam. All right. Everyone knows now. Thanks, everybody. teaching me how to Snapchat. Rock and roll. Goodbye. He's my tutor. Last word. Rock and roll.

Oh, my God. Rock and roll. Rock and roll, though. Rock and roll. Cool.